House committee members investigating the Capitol riot have found enough evidence for the Justice Department to consider an unprecedented criminal charge against former President Donald Trump for overturning the election results of 2020.
“I would like the Justice Department to investigate any credible allegations of criminal activity on the part of Donald Trump,” said Adam Schiff, a Democratic committee member who also heads the House Intelligence Committee.
“There are certain actions, parts of these various attempts to reverse the election, that I see no evidence that the Justice Department is investigating.”
The committee held its first public hearing last week, during which members set out their case against Trump to show how the defeated president relentlessly pushed through his false claims of a rigged the election despite multiple advisers telling him otherwise and how he staged an extraordinary plan to Joe Bidens undo. Victory.
Additional evidence will be revealed this week during hearings showing how Trump and his advisers made a “huge effort” to spread misinformation and pressured the Justice Department to accept his false claims.
Commissioners indicated on Sunday that their main audience during the hearings could ultimately be Attorney General Merrick Garland, who must decide whether his department can and should prosecute Trump.
They left no doubt that the evidence was sufficient.
“Once the evidence is collected by the Justice Department, it must make a decision on whether it can prove to a jury beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the president or someone else’s,” Schiff said.
“But they should be investigated if there is credible evidence, which I think there is.”
Representative Jamie Raskin said he has no intention of “harming” Garland but noted that the committee has already set out in legal pleadings on various criminal statutes they believe Trump has violated.
“I think he knows, his staff knows, the American lawyers know, what’s at stake here,” Raskin said.
“They know how important it is, but I think they also rightly pay a lot of attention to precedents in history, such as the facts of this case.”
Garland has not specified how he should proceed, which would be unprecedented and potentially complicated in a political election season in which Trump has openly flirted with the idea of running for president again in 2024.
“We will follow the facts wherever they lead,” Garland said in his address at Harvard University’s opening ceremony last month.
A federal judge in California said in a March ruling in a civil case that Trump was “more likely than not” to have committed federal crimes by attempting to obstruct the counting of the Electoral College ballots on Jan. 6, 2021.
The judge cited two statutes: obstruction of official proceedings and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing.